Cocktails & Coffee

Our Philosophy of Coffee

Coffee is the very best part of every day. Most evenings we can’t wait to go to sleep so that we can wake up and have coffee! Coffee, coffee, COFFEE!!! Coffee for the Wild Westish team involves a few very important machines that we think of as part of the family. Rocky, Miss Sylvia, and of course Gene.

Gene is our coffee bean roaster. Some years ago there was an emergency when we moved to a town empty of decent coffee beans. Gene was graciously and swiftly donated to the cause by a family member, and has been roasting beans close-to-perfectly ever since, one half pound at a time. We now have access to well-roasted fancy coffee beans, but it turns out that nothing is more satisfying and delicious than coffee from freshly home-roasted beans with the BONUS that the cost of green beans is roughly five dollars a pound. Extra bonus: we love the smell of roasting coffee beans… and hopefully the neighbors do, too.

Rocky and Miss Sylvia are our burr grinder and espresso machine. While we try not to be too involved with things, we would grab these if the house was on fire.

Coffee is important every day, so we always travel (and camp) with a hand grinder and stove top espresso pot. Once we visited a friend in Oakland and woke up in a coffee-less house. That was the last time we travelled without coffee, because looking for coffee when you haven’t had any coffee is a toe-stubbing unhappy time, and a bad start to the day.

How We Do Booze

We like cocktails and we like whiskey, straight. In the Wild Westish home base, there is some disagreement about how sweet a cocktail should be, but for the most part it is agreed that simpler is better and not-too-sweet is best. We tend to favor citrus as a flavor. Once upon a time there was a flurry of homemade syrups and shrubs… but in the end we had a fridge full of colorful, flavorful syrups and a glass of whiskey, neat, in our hand. Not to say we don’t enjoy a good mixed drink, just that a few faves kept floating to the top and they rarely included homemade honeydew shrub. Our motto is make them strong, simple and delicious.